


We Haven't Got Time for the End of the World

by ExquisitelyExplicit



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, End of the World, Existence, Experiment, Gen, Time - Freeform, Wibbly Wobbley Timey Whimey, teaser
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 02:34:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1411768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExquisitelyExplicit/pseuds/ExquisitelyExplicit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is time anyway?<br/>Jackson couldn't tell you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Haven't Got Time for the End of the World

**Author's Note:**

> This was just some characterization practice/experimentation for a novel I'm playing with, but need to wait to write until I clean out a couple of my other projects.  
> I mixed in a couple hints as to what could be coming in the plot, but I tried my best not to give anything away--guesses are encouraged, though!

There was no before, and there was no after--at least as far as I could tell. The here and now was how it always had been. Like Death, I had little concept of time.  
Certainly, I always heard people _talking_ about it.  
"I don't have time for this!"  
"What time is it?"  
"Have you got the time?"  
"Why's there so little _time_ in the day?"  
And so they all screamed. I was used to it, especially the things people said in their dying throes--"Please, just give me more _time_." But when I asked Death what time was, he smiled sadly at me and shook his head in a bemused sort of fashion.  
"Oh, Jackson, I wish I knew."  
I've studied it, I suppose for the amount of existence that you would call _long_ and all I can see is that it's a construct. A figment of your imagination. There is _time_ in a more relative sense, but all that marks it is the turning of the Earth around a flaming ball of gas that will not exist for eternity.  
And while we're on the subject--

I'm sorry, that's not what I'm here to say, is it?  
The point is, I don't understand time as you see it. There is the here and now and that is all there is. Everything happens at once, all coming together in a multitudinous cacophony of catastrophe and calamity and exceptional circumstances that dot the timeline that is the universe. (And there it is again, _time_. The only problem is that it doesn't _have_ to be linear--it's more of a circular construct.)  
The human race doesn't have _time_ for the end of the world. They saw it coming a mile away and started picketing against it six thousand years early. Through sheer tenacity they attempted to postpone the coming of the apocalypse.  
And Death laughed at them all with his silvery sort of chuckle and shook his head and clucked his tongue and asked me to give him the list of his daily rounds--because life and death go on, despite the way the world turns, tossing you upside down every several months and you can't even tell. 

But what about the butterfly effect? It's a real phenomena and that's more likely to be your downfall than any other silly sort of thing. There are things, people, that don't _belong_. But once they're there, you can't really get rid of them without twisting events further. The only thing Death has ever told me about their unnatural appearances is that they are due to clerical errors.  
"Clerical errors?" I asked him seriously, my heart bumping in my chest so hard I could feel it in my head.  
"None of them are your fault, Jackson, fear not," he reassured me placidly, placing one China white, snowy cool hand against my shoulder. "...Though I hope you never thought you were the first."  
Slowly, I shook my head, unsure of the real answer to that question. Because I could _remember_ everything. The actions, the motions. Only, some of it was surrounded in a dream-like haze, half obscured by uncertain emotions, leaving me with the feeling that maybe I hadn't ever felt them at all. "No, I don't think I thought that."  
"I'm glad then; it would be a shame to disappoint you."  
To be sure, I did seem more human than construct, but sometimes so did he.  
Death was tall and pale with a head of somewhat unruly dark hair that he spent no time at all fixing, for it could be rearranged at a snap of his fingers, with uncertainly colored eyes and a claret colored suit. He raised one eyebrow and held out his hand.  
In it, I placed a list, a nearly endless list, of names. The dead. They were from every point, some before and some after, and it mattered not who or when, because time is a relative construct and we live in the bubble that bobs along beside it. Like a rubber duck, floating in the circular pool at a carnival, you may only walk along the edge, but we ride the currents as we please.  
He nodded, quirking a half smile, and ruffled one hand through my floppy blond hair. "Good day, Jackson."  
"See you soon, sir."

We haven't got time for the end of the world, neither you nor I, for I couldn't possibly write out that entire list of names. I'm a secretary, not sadist.


End file.
